Some quick non-spoilery opinions on all the shows I'm watching at the moment:

30 Rock

It's only the best comedy on television! Possibly ever! Not only is the cast uniformly funny and gorgeous, the show continues to tackle actual real life issues (falling in love! Doubting the path you've taken in life! Living in a beauty bubble! Being a woman in a man's world! Being a black man in a white man's world!) with such marvellous wit, affection and self deprecation, if you're not watching your life is not complete.

Bones

When it's not trying too hard to be funny, this show IS pretty funny and enjoyable. The unique, appealing characters generally make up for some of the more dubious plot turns (although not always). It is very sad that I no longer care whether Booth and Brennan get together though.

Damages

Rose Byrne, Glenn Close and Marcia Gay Harden playing powerful, brilliant, complex, fabulous women, who make the male characters on the show look really quite pathetic? HELL YES. I love it *so* hard.

Dollhouse

After the most recent episode, my new favourite? I'm not kidding! I encourage everyone who understandably abandoned this early on to give it a second chance, because if it stays as good as "Man on the Street" it's going to be a truly great, challenging, entertaining TV show.

Flight of the Conchords

The songs might not be quite as good this season but the boys are as fantastically funny as ever. Did I mention that I met Jemaine once? Also I am friends with some people who know someone who used to shag Bret. New Zealand: where we are all one degree of separation away from each other.

Gossip Girl

I think Vanessa is the most gorgeous girl ever, and Nate is an adorable thicky, and everyone else can go to hell.

House

Remains one of the funnest hours of television, even after all these years. I have the most enormous crush on Kutner. When we watched it on Sunday I was all, "I would have sex with him," to the room, because he's such a sexy dork.

How I Met Your Mother



Lie To Me

VERY VERY GOOD AND GETTING BETTER BY THE WEEK. I just love how interesting and educational it is and how unspeakably cute Brendan Hines is.

Lost

I'm a slave to this show - it's ridiculous yet awesome, and I can't wait to find out what happens next.

Smallville

The last episode didn't suck! ( spoilers )

The United States of Tara

Superb. Actually makes me weepy about once an episode and I mean that in the best possible way.

I still can't get over Will Smith being a Scientologist. I loved him for years dammit. And now he just makes me frown and feel slightly ill. :(

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OMG YAYYYYYYY! I can't wait.

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I really hate all the bad cosmetic surgery in celebrity culture and I just want to scream at these actors who feel the need to fuck up their faces, because they do not look better, and, you know, they're actors. They need to be able to move the muscles in their face! They need to be able to play characters who have not had a bucket load of plastic surgery, like, uh, *the majority of characters*. I understand as well as anyone over the age of thirty that getting older isn't easy, but I don't know who the hell decided that wrinkles are unattractive, because they're just actually not okay. Wrinkles tell a story, they make a face more interesting, they're a necessary (and A-OK) part of the ageing process. Wrinkles are life.

But I think what most annoys me about stretched out, wrinkle-less faces on middle-aged women (men too, but that's less of an issue in Hollywood) is that these people *don't actually look younger*. They look exactly the age they are, but without wrinkles. And that's just weird! I personally find it unpleasant looking at people who have had obvious work done, and it's especially disheartening when they are people I once found attractive (a prime example would be Christa Miller from Scrubs. WHY CHRISTA WHY?).

It's not that I blame any individual for going down the plastic surgery route, because it's such a competitive business and I know older women struggle to find good parts so they think they need to look eternally youthful. I just really wish it weren't like this.

I will leave you with a quote by Stephanie Zacharek, from her lovely piece about Paul Newman after his death:

If the point of Method acting is for a performer to take something of himself and pour it into a performance, then perhaps Bob Dylan inadvertently hit on one of the secrets of the Method, as well as life, when he wrote the line -- itself borrowed from deep-rooted Judao-Christian values -- "He not busy being born is busy dying." Come to think of it, maybe that's a beauty secret, too. One of the frustrating things about the growing prevalence of cosmetic surgery is that it deprives actors of the faces they were meant to have. Newman, while admittedly in possession of great genes, accepted every physical change and put it to work. In giving us their faces to read, actors give us many things. Newman's face, year after year, has given so many of us countless hours of pleasure. It also tells us that in his work, and probably in his life, he was busy being born, until the very last.

I wrote an upset rant about that fucking boob project bullshit earlier today, which I privatised almost immediately when I realised I didn't actually want to talk about all the reasons it upset me, and that instead I wanted to talk about Flight of the Conchords!

This is my first viewing of FotC (shameful really. Not only are they my fellow kiwis, I have met Jermaine! True Story: about ten or so years ago my best friend Kirsten and I partied with him and some of his friends on New Year's Eve and Kirsten spent a good amount of time that night making out with him. HA! I won't talk about who I made out with because it's deeply embarrassing, but I think this makes me pretty cool by proxy anyway. Hi Kirsten! Get an LJ already!)

Obviously I love this show like pie, but I think the last ep I watched -- "Bowie" -- is my favourite because it made me laugh so hard I was actually in quite a lot of pain.

First of all, the boys' biggest fan, Mel, SLASHES THEM, which I of course find delightful. It's always nice to be represented on telly!

But then when Jermaine sang Bret the truly, truly gay song, "Bret You've Got It Going On," I lost my mind:

( A sample of lyrics. )



ETA: Oh yes, I also watched the pilot of "Mad Men", which I thought was excellent. I was all, WHO THE HELL IS THAT GUY AND WHY IS HE SO FAMILIAR. And then it turned out that it's Connor from Angel! Except MUCH less annoying. Thanks for the rec zephyr9 and fleegull!